


Abrogation

by Hoodoo



Series: The Long Arm of the Law [10]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: A new Citadel, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Heavy Angst, Mild Language, New Restrictions, New Rules, Portals, president morty - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-18 22:10:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoodoo/pseuds/Hoodoo
Summary: New Citadel. New rules. Things are changing. You just didn't know what, so there was no way to prepare.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I should mention that this Cop is not the same Cop from the Miami/Cop/reader bits I’ve done; they’re their own separate cops! :)

Something was wrong. 

Sleepily, you stretch a little, invading the other side of the bed.

There’s no one there.

That’s not completely unusual; a majority of your nights you spend alone. 

But tonight . . . you hadn’t been alone.

Rick had visited. He’d shown up, as planned, you had a nice meal together, you’d fooled around until it culminated in you straddling him, here, right in this bed, and fucking him, hard, wild, greedy for everything you could take from him, willing to give him everything you could—his fingers left marks squeezing so tightly on your hips and upper thighs as he’d lost his voice crying out while he came inside you, his slender body arcing up into you. The sensation of him so deep inside made you laugh and cry at the same time as it pushed you into your own orgasm before you collapsed on top of him. He’d smoothed your hair and kissed your forehead in the afterglow. You’d settled in snugly beside him and fell asleep to the sound of his breathing.

And now you’re alone in the bed. It dawns on you the sheets on his side are cold. 

Rick’s never left you like that, without saying goodbye. He’s always very specific about how much time he gets in your dimension. 

You blink in the dim of the room, but you’re too muddled to work this puzzle of why he had left. 

Gradually you realize there’s a thin band of light shining under your bedroom door.

You get up and wrap yourself in a robe. His robe, it happens to be; he shares your body wash when he’s here but it’s still saturated with his individual scent. You hold it bunched tightly around yourself and walk carefully into the living room.

The single light hurts your dark-adapted eyes and you squint as they adjust. 

Rick is in the middle of your living room floor, dressed in pyjama pants and an undershirt. Bits and pieces of electronics and tools are strewn about. He’s holding something that looks a little like a smoke detector in his hand.

“Rick?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, baby. Go back to bed.”

You shuffle over to him instead, taking a path with the least amount of debris surrounding him. It leads behind him. He leans over and rests his head on your leg. 

“What’re you doing?”

“I’m just-just updating some things.”

Your fingers scratch through his hair, on his scalp, and he sighs. 

“Go back to bed,” he repeats. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

You’re still so tired you comply. You don’t know when he returns to your side; he’s just there when you wake up fully the next morning. This time you’re the one to slip out of bed without waking him up.

When you walk into the living room you find the mess he’d made in the middle of the night is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

He never mentioned his late night building frenzy. You don’t either, figuring it was just one of those Rick things, the need to tinker and invent. You couldn’t hope to understand everything about him.

You’d settled into a routine, and it was nice. It still wasn’t exactly what either of you wanted, since he was still—and always, apparently—on a portal gun restriction. But you both made the best of it. 

You’d had a pregnancy scare, which you didn’t want to talk about but he did. He wasn’t against having a baby with you, he’d said, but he didn’t think the timing was right, right now. It was something for the future, he’d told you. But if it was something you wanted, if it was something you’d been thinking about and thinking maybe sooner rather than later, he was open to further discussion.

The way he’d said it, with the words “baby” and “future” and “further discussion”, made warmth flare in you, because yes, yes, you realized it was something you wanted. You wanted him fiercely; you wanted a piece of him growing into new life inside your belly; you wanted a life together that wasn’t you in your dimension and him on the Citadel. 

The two of you came to the decision you both could have that later, when his tenure in the police force was done. 

There were some hiccups in your relationship, of course. In relationships there always are. He wasn’t always happy about having to do all the leg work visiting, and you weren’t always grateful to see him. Occasionally you fought. But that was life, and he was still the best Rick you could imagine. 

However, recently, there were times he was distracted. He’d be lost in his own thoughts, and it could take time to bring him back. Occasionally he muttered in his sleep, which was startling, because he’d never done that before. It was mostly disjointed words about paperwork and laws. You stroked his chest to soothe him when his sleep-talking woke you up, which may have helped a little, even if he didn’t wake up himself. 

When you asked anything about his work or the Citadel, previously he would at least give you cursory information; now he simply outright refused to answer. 

Something was wrong, and you had no clue what it was, or how to make it better. 

It’s not to say there weren’t good days. 

Much of your time together was normal. You laughed, you talked, you had okay sex, you had mind-blowing sex. 

Till then end of your days you’d never forget the night he arrived with a bouquet of flowers and a box of alcoholic chocolates—flowers from some alien planet that trembled at the slightest breeze or touch and made the most erotic, sensual noises, like lovers, when they brushed against each other, and Citadel chocolate that was potent enough to get you pass out drunk if you ate too many of them at once.

Rick had set the flowers in a vase, them sighing and moaning as they moved, and fed you two chocolates: one from his fingers, the other from between his lips. 

You were pleasantly buzzed when he went down on you. He’d hiked your legs over his shoulders and wrapped his arms around your upper thighs so tightly you couldn’t back away from the wicked things he did with his mouth. His tongue made slow circuits around your pussy, from teasing your clit to slipping sinuously into your cunt and back again, dragging an orgasm slowly out of you. While you were still on that high with him between your legs, he pressed a single finger into you.

At your whine that it wasn’t enough, he huffed a laugh and added a second. He flicked at your clit with the tip of his tongue and curled his fingers inside you, putting pressure on your g-spot until you arched against him. Before you could succumb to a second orgasm, he slipped in a third slender digit.

That sent you over the edge and you came hard on his hand with a cry. The force of it shook the bed too, which shook the bedside table, which made the flowers echo the sound of your pleasure. 

Rick wiped his face, grinning, as he moved up your body. He wrapped your legs around his waist and guided his cock into you without giving you enough time to recover.

It was heavenly. His fingers were good, you loved that, but his cock was perfect, opening you up and filling you completely. You were slick and the sensation of him rocking in and out of your overstimulated pussy, overstimulated nerve endings, was almost too much to bear.   
He fucked you vigorously, with snappy hip movements that continued to shake the mattress. Another orgasm built on the foundations of the others and you moaned wordlessly, helpless before him. Rick seemed to know just when it would be too much, however, and stilled with just the head of his cock in your cunt. 

When your eyes wretched open in surprise that he had stopped, he chuckled. Shifting slightly on the bed, he shuffled upward till he was on his knees. He pushed your legs up so they were straight and resting on his shoulders, which angled your hips upward too. Then he leaned forward, very gently, and rolled his hips towards you again. The position made it feel like he was going deeper.

He groaned. You fumbled for a handhold on him, and choked out, begging frantically, 

“Rick! What-what can I do for you? Please! You’ve-you’ve—oh _god—_ you’ve fucked me so hard—and I haven’t, I haven’t done anything for you—what can I do to make you feel good?”

Rick looked down on you with ecstasy on his face. 

“Who said I wasn’t getting exactly what I wanted right now?” he replied, his voice so deep with lust it resonated through his chest. 

Just those words and his tone, and his cock seated perfectly inside you, were enough to make you come for the third time that night. Rick groaned at the sensation of your pussy clenching him, and he fucked you forcefully again, until he emptied himself inside you. 

You were both exhausted after that session.

So there were still times when he was his old self and you could pretend there was nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, it made you wonder if you were just reading into everything incorrectly. Maybe he wasn’t troubled, maybe he was preoccupied. His job required a lot of paperwork, and you knew he was a stickler for rules, so maybe, just maybe . . .

. . . maybe his stress was for something positive, not negative. 

It was hard to imagine something like that. Hard to hope for something like a—dare you say?—real commitment. But maybe he was looking into legal ways to get a licensed portal gun, for more freedom, or maybe . . . maybe he was researching laws about married couples on the Citadel . . .

Still, with so many thoughts sparring, even the hopeful ones, it was disconcerting when he would sit and watch you intently, like there was something on the tip of his tongue he wanted to say, but never did. Or when he took you back to the firing range he’d given you lessons at before, and then when you made it back home he presented you with two guns: an Earth-standard semiautomatic handgun, and a non-standard gun that looked like a cartoon-ish sci-fi weapon. 

He also told you he’d installed a safe that needed both a fingerprint and voice recognition to open, and he expected you to be able to access it and have a weapon in your hand in less than a minute’s time, if needed. He made you practice.

That was disturbing. You asked him repeatedly why, what the reason for this was, but he only shook his head and told you he wanted you to be safe. 

You felt safe when you were with him. Once, late at night in the dark, you told him that. He’d shifted on the mattress and spooned you, but didn’t reply. His breath hitched some, which was odd.

Along with the guns, he presented you with a few coin-shaped tokens. They were small enough to be hidden in your palm with your fingers closed, but solid and dense in construction. 

“I’m sorry I n-never was able to work out some way for you to-for you to contact me when I’m not here,” Rick apologized, as he dropped several into your hand. 

“Is that what these are for?” you asked, holding one up to the light to examine it. Along the outer edge you could see a swirlish green on the inside, just like a miniature portal. 

“N-n-no, baby,” he said. There was a note of sadness in his voice that made you look over at him. “These are two-use portal chips. They’re, well . . . they’re illegal now because they’ve been, they’ve been removed from use, by the-the government. We’re supposed to turn in any we confiscate but I-I . . . I took them. I-I-I t-took them and I m-modified them. Instead of going from point of origin to the Citadel and back, they’ll-they’ll take you someplace . . . neutral. Someplace safer.”

“Rick, what is going on?” you demanded. “Why are you giving me these things?”

Once again he refused to answer you. As a matter of fact, he held you close and kissed you even as you protested and insisted he tell you, then interrupted by saying he had to go. It occurred to you he’d waited until the last minute to give these to you, before he was required to return to the Citadel, so he wouldn’t have to answer your questions. 

He left you only with the instruction that pressing down on one would activate it, so don’t use it unless you have to, baby.

Then he disappeared through the portal, leaving you a little scared, and with more confusion.


	3. Chapter 3

You weren’t expecting Rick tonight. You were both very conscious of his schedule, since it changed on a monthly basis. He never arrived early, but depending on his work load, there were occasions he’d been late. He was due for a visit tomorrow, so this evening you were lounging and dividing your attention between the book in your lap and some inane sit-com on the TV as background noise. 

Somebody pounded on your door. 

Immediately your heart was in your throat. 

It was too late for visitors. You weren’t expecting anyone anyway. Should you get one of the guns? Was this what Rick was trying to prepare you for—a home invasion? You didn’t think you could shoot somebody; maybe you should use one of those tokens he’d given you?! 

Rick would berate you for freezing and taking too much time to make a decision!

The pounding continued. 

“Baby! Baby, it’s me, let me in! Oh god, please be home—“ Rick shouted through the door.

You scrambled up, dropping your book to the floor and rushing to the door. Hurriedly you glance through the peephole and see him—dressed in his police uniform?!—not looking at your door but glancing left and right as if watching for something or someone.   
His fist rattled your door again, and you fumbled through the lock and chain to open it.

Rick fell into the room and slammed the door behind him, securing it again. Then he grabbed at you. He was sweating and panting. You’d never seen him in such a state: anxious, fearful, panicked.

“Rick! What the hell—“

Dropping the portal gun to the nearest table, he pulled you close and kissed you. You didn’t really return it, as frightened as you were; instead you struggled out of his grip to repeat, 

“—what the hell, Rick! Why are you here? You were visiting tomorrow night! Why are you wearing your uniform—what is going on?!”

“Baby, baby—they’re coming, I am so sorry, baby!—listen to me, you’ll be okay, you’ll be fine—“

His babbled words didn’t quell your fear. It kicked it higher.

“Rick—what? Who? Who is coming? What’s going on?!” 

Unbidden, tears welled in your eyes. 

Rick saw. “Shh, shh, oh ba-baby—“ he soothed.

It didn’t work. 

_“Tell me what’s happening, Rick!”_

He licked his lips and looked around your living room, just like he’d been doing outside. It made your throat dry and your tears streamed down your cheeks.

_“Rick, please!”_

He focused on you again. “O-okay, baby! Here, sit down, sit down with me, let me hold you—“

He pulled you to the couch and sat, trying to maneuver you into his lap. You strain against him; his behavior is so out of character you’re getting more and more terrified by the second. He’s stronger than you, however, so he does manage to get you onto the cushions beside him. He also finds the remote and shuts down the TV.

Once everything is quiet for a moment, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He holds it in for a moment, and when he lets it out, his eyes open and lock on yours. Now you see the blue of them are amplified by tears too, and you reach for him.

He leans into you and takes your face in his hands. You can feel the tremble in them. He presses his forehead to yours.

“I have to tell you some things,” he says quietly.


	4. Chapter 4

Rick launches into a story. You’re used to insane stories from Ricks; your ex had some doozies. This one is about the Citadel, and the new President—a Morty President—and the chaos his reign had begot. It’d been okay, for a while, transition periods were always a mix of normal and dipping a toe into the new, with subtle tweaks at first, but recently everything had been amped up and changes were being implemented with an iron fist. 

You listened incredulously. What he described, from blatant, flaunted corruption to public executions, sounded like a nightmare. 

Rick was part of the police force. He was required by his job to do some . . . unsavory . . . things, he said. Things that made it hard for him to sleep. Things that made him wonder if he should just go AWOL from his home—

“Yes! _Yes!”_ you interjected. “Yes, please! Send the portal gun back when its time is up! Just stay here with me! Rick, stay here, in this dimension!”

The sad smile he gave you made you cold with fear.

“There’s no way to hide from him,” Rick told you quietly. He didn’t name “him”, but his tone was ominous.

“Then—then, what if—“

“A new law was just passed,” he interrupted. “There are new strict sanctions on who can leave and enter the Citadel. Portal guns are outlawed for the general public. Only high ranking members of the New Council are permitted to use them.”

The enormity of what he just said floored you. You try to wrap your head around it. Rick gives you time to process it, and when you look back up at him, you can barely see him through the tears in your eyes. You croak,

“You can’t come back? I won’t . . . I won’t be able to see you again?”

“Oh baby—“

You sob out loud and he crushes you with a hug. He’s crying too, you realize. That doesn’t make it any better. Neither do his kisses: desperate and quick, and full of pain. 

“Baby, baby—“ Rick continues to mutter for a moment, then he jumps as if stung. He confesses, “I-I-I stole a portal gun. I stole it—I had to see you again, I couldn’t-I couldn’t not see you again, I couldn’t let you not know—“

As much as his confession startles you, you beg, 

“Rick, just stay here! Just stay with me, don’t go back there! Please don’t—“

“I don’t have a choice, baby. They’re-they’re going to be coming for me—“

“What if, what if I was pregnant? What if I was pregnant, and—“

He shakes his head. 

“—they would have to let you stay, then, right?! They would have to make an exception—“

“Baby, oh, baby, they don’t care about that sort of thing—“

But you’re not dissuaded. Another thought, another solution, a horrible solution jumps at you and you say, “What if you—what if you take the place of the Rick from here? What if he . . . disappeared, and you took his place?!”

Rick’s eyes hold yours for a moment, but he seems tired now, and a little dull. “I can’t kill another Rick and take his place,” he tells you quietly. “That particular crime carries the worst penalty . . .”

You want to cry. You want to scream that there _has_ to be a way, that he’s Rick fucking Sanchez and he could come up with a way to make staying together work if he just put his fucking mind to it instead of rolling over and exposing his belly—but you know that he’s already gone through so many scenarios in his head, he’s worked the problem from angles you can’t even fathom. If he, if your Rick, the fine upstanding Officer of the Citadel Police Force, stole a portal gun so he had the opportunity to see you one last time, he really couldn’t find a way to circumvent whatever law was doing this. It really was the end. 

A stupid rational part of your brain knows that. But the other part, the emotional part, can’t help but continue to try and come up with something, grasping at straws, because it can’t believe what is happening.

“Rick, what if we just go? What if we just leave right now—“

Your entire place is shaken by a new, heavier pounding on your front door.

You both jump. Rick squeezes your hands till they hurt. And everything happens in the slow motion of an inevitable car wreck, dread filling your stomach with nausea: the sound from the door, you and him speaking over each other—

“They found me,” Rick says. “They discovered they can’t portal in here—they’re gonna-they’re gonna break down your door, baby—“

The pounding continues.

You can’t give up on your thought, though. “—you and me, we can go somewhere, anywhere—“

“No, no, no, baby,” Rick mutters. “Listen to me, listen to me, you’ll be okay, I won’t let them hurt you, they know about the portal dampener—“

The pounding continues. 

_“—please,_ Rick, please—right now, you have the gun, let’s just _go—“_

The pounding continues, but it doesn’t cover the whine of machinery or the sudden blaze of light as whatever laser tool they’re using melts through the metal around the doorknob and lock of your steel front door.

Rick takes the sides of your head again, and forces you to look at him. His voice becomes a quiet, determined pant. He continues as if you hadn’t spoken, 

“—they know about the portal dampener but don’t tell them about the relays. Don’t tell them about the guns, or the tokens—“

“—we could go back to your dimension! We could live in your dimension!” you beg desperately, and the door is kicked open.


	5. Chapter 5

The first person through your destroyed door is the last person you expected to see: your ex-Rick. You haven’t seen him in you don’t remember how long, but he’s unmistakable. Even if you didn’t have the ability to somehow differentiate between your Rick and your ex, the maniacal laugh he gives as he struts into the room—like he owns the place, like he’s comfortable being here—is a dead giveaway.

“Oh you stupid bitch,” he says sweetly, as other Ricks crowd in behind him. 

They are carrying guns and garbed in what you recall as Council Guard uniforms, but minor changes have been made to them: a broad stripe of red down the back of the jacket, and a new badge that isn’t just an “R” any longer, but with a stylized “M” overlaying it.

It’s the same insignia, you realize with a start, the Rick has on his police uniform.

One of them picks up the portal gun Rick used and shoves it into his belt.

Your Rick is on his feet and you copy him. He keeps you behind him, shielding you, and your hands automatically clutch at the back of his shirt.

“What did I tell you about talking like that around her?” your Rick says very seriously to your ex.

Your ex chokes on his own laughter. “Oh, you-you-you stupid cuck! You pig! You’re in for it now, and _that’s_ what you’re focused on?!”

Rick lowers his chin and stares your ex down.

One of the Guards steps forward and says, “Rick Sanchez, dimension D-598, you are under arrest for the theft of government property. You are also charged with fleeing the Citadel, unlicensed visitation, and conspiracy. You—“

Rick stiffens in front of you. You infer the word ‘conspiracy’ is what did it, because he wasn’t expecting it. 

Your ex is incredibly gleeful at that. He talks over the Guard, who seems bored with the whole thing and doesn’t seem to care. 

“C-conspiracy! Oh, that’s right!” your ex chortles. “Conspiracy to take up residency in my dimension, cocksucker! I made sure to-to-to get that little tidbit written right in there, in bold.”

“Rick, why are you doing this?!” you demand, but your voice is shaky instead of firm.

Your ex makes an exaggerated frown at you. “Because, you stupid bitch, no one takes anything from me! You think you have the _right_ to just dump me, and this asshole, this asshole, he-he swoops in and fucking _shoves me through a portal to a fucking Federal outpost?!_ You’re both lucky that I didn’t just, just show up here again and blow your fucking brains out!”

His voice rises to just below a screech at the end, and cracks.

He modifies it again and continues ominously, “But this is so much better—so much fucking better because that’d just be you dead and this-this is you two fucking _broken—_ there are so many plans for you, pig Rick—“

“—and you will be provided with—“ the Guard has continued, as if he’s reciting from memory.

Your ex turns his attention to Rick, and muses theatrically, “Why didn’t you take her up on her offer, Rick? Why didn’t you just go skipping back to your dimension, with your little slut in tow?”

In front of you, Rick tenses again. He also slips a hand behind himself, which grabs all the Guards’ attention. They shift into ready stances, and you see their grips get tighter on their weapons. 

But Rick only takes your hand and shows them that he hasn’t got anything dangerous.

“I heard her say that, Rick,” your ex had continued. “I heard her sniveling about just going to your home. So why didn’t you? You had the means—“

Here he pauses and taps his finger to his lips, like he’s actually thinking about it. He was always an overdramatic diva.

“Oh! Oh! I remember now!” he exclaims. “You _can’t_ go home!”

A question slips passed your lips before you can realize it. “What?”

“You didn’t-you didn’t tell her?” your ex asks, in that dramatic fashion. “Oh baby, wait till you hear—“

“No,” Rick says quietly, then repeats it more forcefully. _“No.”_

Your ex gives him a condescending smile. “Y-y-yes. Baby, your hero here, your knight in s-sh-shining fucking armor, is a murderer. A fucking _mass murderer._ He fucking gunned down a group on the streets— _how_ many people was it? _How_ many of them were innocent bystanders?”

Your Rick doesn’t say anything, and in the pause your ex continues to spout,

“And then you fucking _ran—_ ran like a pussy, ran because you-you-you knew you’d get the death penalty and you _deserved_ it, but you were too scared to die—you portaled right to the fucking Citadel so you didn’t have to face the consequences, you fucking pussy—“

The perverse glee your ex is taking from relaying this information compounds the nausea in your stomach. To hear that the man who was so kind and gentle and loving did something like that must be a mistake, you must have heard wrong, it was a lie—

“Rick?” you whisper.

He turns, slightly, to look at you. His hand in yours doesn’t give you a reassuring squeeze.

“It wasn’t like that,” he replies quietly. 

You sob out loud. 

At the noise of your pain and disbelief, Rick turns back to you, disregarding the rest of the Ricks filling the room. He takes your shoulder, he cups your cheek, and he dips his head so he can look you in the face. 

“It wasn’t like that, baby,” he repeats. His voice is low and serious. “There were these men, they-they were into hardcore-they were into bad stuff. Money laundering, a drug ring, the normal stuff . . . and they were also into human trafficking. Women. Kids. They took them, they sold them. Sold them into . . . into . . . they took them for . . .” 

He shakes his head and pinches his lips together instead of completing the sentence. 

“I took care of that,” he tells you, with finality.

Rick never talked about his original dimension or his life before the Citadel. There is such pain in his voice you instinctually know it’s more than that. The words to ask who they stole from him—his wife? His daughter?—are forming in your mouth, but before you can voice them, your ex bursts back in, crowing, 

“You sure fucking did, Officer! You got them, and those two c-commuters, and that shopkeeper, and the woman coming out of the café—“

Rick roars and spins back to your ex. The change is terrifying and electric, and in two quick strides he has your ex by the throat. Taken by surprise, your ex barely manages to squeak before Rick’s hands start to squeeze. Your ex flails but Rick seems immune to the punch and scratch he manages to land.

Your hands go to your mouth. Passed the two of them, the group of Guard still seems pretty bored with the whole situation, although you see two of them exchange glances—not because they’re trying to decide when they should intervene, but because they’re obviously taking bets on how long your ex will last. You see the two of them confer briefly and some hand signals conferring money pass between them.

The main Guard, the one who’d been reciting charges, simply sighs and says, 

“R-r-really? You’re gonna kill this dickwad right here, in front of us? That’s gonna add a slew of other charges, and increase the amount of goddamn paperwork I’ll have to do . . .”

Your Rick snarls. Your ex is gagging but no sound comes from his lips and he is turning an alarming shade of dark red. Rick takes another second before relaxing his grip, and when he does, he uses so much force to shove the man he was choking away your ex stumbles and rams into the end table before catching himself. 

Rick demands, “Get this fucking piece of shit out of my face! _Get him out of here!”_

Your ex, a protective hand at his throat while the air denied him returns, wheezes, 

“This is, this is _my_ dimension! I have a right, a _right_ to be here—he fucking tried to kill me _twice_ in my own dimension—“

“Get him the fuck out of here and I go with you quietly,” Rick offers.

“Twice!” your ex tries to shout. His voice is still damaged, so it’s not impressive. “Twice! That needs to go in the re-report, that needs to go on the charges—attempted murder, attempted murder of a Rick and conspiracy to take up residence in his dimension—“

The head Guard rolls his eyes.

“Quietly,” Rick repeats, like a sacrificial lamb.

“You can’t make a deal with him!” your ex shrieks in a hoarse voice. “This is _my dimension—just fucking shoot him!_ He tried to kill me, he’ll try to kill _you_ instead of going back to the Citadel—“

“President Morty would like to speak to him,” the Guard interrupts, _"personally._ We’re not going to shoot him.”

“You idiots! You fucknuts! Now he’ll never go with you—you s-s-showed your hand, threatening him with this “President” Morty—“

“Get him out of here,” the head Guard said over his shoulder to one of the others.

Still screeching, still trying to yell about how stupid the group of them was, your ex is grabbed and frog- marched to just outside your front door, to be heaved through another portal he didn’t want to go through for the second time in your presence. 

“God that Rick’s an asshole,” one of them mutters, in the sudden quiet. 

Head Guard nods in agreement, then turns his attention back to Rick. “Come on, Rick. Let’s go.”

“Give me a couple of minutes, Rick. Give me a couple more minutes with her.”

The Guard wrinkles his nose in distaste. The others scoff behind him. 

“You’re not getting away.”

“No,” Rick agrees, and just that admission makes you want to cry again. “I just want a couple more minutes.”

The Guard appraises him sharply. “I w-wasn’t lying. President Morty wants to talk to you. Make you Captain, I heard, of his-his police force. He’s got his eyes on you. Thinks you’re-you’re special. He’s not going to let you go.”

“I know,” Rick replies very quietly, like this is not new information to him. Then he straightens and looks the head Guard right in the eye. “You know me, Rick. We were on the force together. When I say I’m going back with you, you know I’m telling the truth.”

The Guard wipes a line of drool off his chin, sighs, and finally nods. “Fine, asshole. The rest of you, come on.”

To your disbelief—and theirs—the Guard herds them back through your door to wait outside. Rick turns to you again, even before the last of them are gone.


	6. Chapter 6

He has a tiny scratch and a swelling is starting on his jaw where your ex managed to land a blow attempting to hold him off. Automatically your fingers go to the spot; even in this situation you could never ignore the urge to tend to his wounds.

Although it must hurt, Rick presses into your hand. 

“Oh baby . . .” he mutters, and takes you into his arms.

You sob and he kisses you. You cling to him and he kisses you. You want to beg him again to please don’t go, please stay, please find another way, but you don’t. He’s given his word, and you know just as the Guard did that he isn’t going back on it. 

Rick guides you to the couch and finally, like he tried to do earlier, is able to hold you in his lap. He rocks and doesn’t shush you. He presses his lips to your tear soaked, reddened cheeks. Occasionally he finds your mouth. 

In between kisses he tells you he remembers how he found you on the Citadel, scared and angry, and how pretty he thought you were, even in that state. And how he was so worried about taking you to his apartment, in case that would scare you even more, and how you surprised him by being bold and kissing him. Rick tells you he can still remember how warm your skin was through your thin shirt. You interject you recall how terrified he looked when you took that shirt off when he wasn’t expecting it; he chuckles with you at the memory. 

He reminisces, softly, about the things the two of you had done, from the alien worlds he showed you to the flowers he brought you that sometimes didn’t work out—a particularly unexpectedly aggressive decorative vine tried to take over your kitchen, once!—to the lazy days the two of you spent literally all day in bed just because you could. 

You hiccup some giggles and remind him of the time you attempted a recipe you thought you could do, a dish he’d had growing up but hadn’t eaten for years, and how it failed miserably with incorrect spices _and_ slightly burning it to boot, and he ate it anyway.

You hold him and he holds you, comforting each other. You feel dried up inside. Hollow. You don’t have any more words left. His forehead rests on your temple and your breath matches his; you breathe each other’s air. 

The Guard Rick steps back into your living room. 

Rick tenses a little, and that makes fresh tears flood your eyes.

“One more minute,” he asks.

Guard Rick replies, “You’ve had enough,” and there’s finality in his voice. 

Your Rick stands slowly, like he’s an old man. As he does, he keeps his mouth close to your ear, whispering, 

“They don’t know I’ve re-wired and reprogramed the portal dampener. He’s going to take it-he’s required to take it, but I set up a secondary relay they don’t know about to activate when the first power supply is disrupted. It’s more powerful too, so-so-so you should be safe.”

You don’t know how to respond to that.

Guard holds up something that looks like every set of hand-cuffs you’ve ever seen in a sci-fi movie.

“I don’t need those,” Rick tells him.

“You’re the one who likes to-to follow rules.”

You didn’t think you had any tears left in you, but more stream down your face as Rick offers his wrists meekly. The devices snap shut and enclose him from mid-forearm to the tips of his fingers to contain his hands. They are awkward and have to be uncomfortable. 

“Tell me you’re going to keep Rick H-122 away from her,” Rick demands. “You saw him, he’s a-a fucking psycho. Keep her safe from him. If he does anything to her, fuck the new President’s rules. I will fucking hunt him down myself.”

The Guard clenches his teeth. You can tell he wants to snap something back and can imagine it’s along the lines of, “not my job,” or “who gives fuck about a dumb slut,” but with the fierce expression on Rick’s face he sighs instead and grinds out that he’ll do what he can. 

“Thank you,” Rick tells him sincerely. Then he lifts his eyebrows and nods upwards, towards the portal dampener fastened to the wall near your door. The unobtrusive thing has never elicited any questions, since it looks similar to the other smoke detector you have in the hallway. “And don’t forget that, you know it can’t stay here.”

Guard grunts and reaches up to yank it from the wall. There’s a slight electrical whine that fades away like it’s dying when he does.

As he’s occupied with that, Rick steps back into your personal space and leans in. 

“It’ll take ten minutes to reboot,” he whispers. 

He doesn’t lose the opportunity to kiss you again. It’s deep this time, his tongue chasing yours, stealing your breath. In other circumstances you’d feel heat pool in your belly and expand between your legs; this is a kiss of passion and desperation and wanting more. Like so many times before, like it’s a ritual, you slip one hand to the back of his neck to hold him close while the other rests on his chest, over his heart. 

His heartbeat is strong and steady. You want to feel it forever.

He’s tugged off balance away from you.

He still strains towards you, for a moment, still lost in his longing. Suddenly, you’re sobbing again and begging, begging, begging for him not to go. You plead to let him stay. Your fingers try to find a grip on him, to keep him.

The Guard deftly maneuvers you off him.

“Baby, baby—“ Rick tries to soothe, but you don’t want soothed, you want _him._

You wail in pain.

Guard Rick’s lips thin in irritation. He withdraws his portal gun and conjures the swirling green doorway in a wall, then he manhandles Rick towards it.

Rick tries again, desperately. “Baby—I-I love—“

“Don’t you say it!” you shriek, interrupting him. _“Don’t you say it, don’t you tell me that now—“_

Before he can respond to that, Rick is shoved through the portal and disappears from your sight. Guard Rick steps through without a backward glance at you, and the eddying mass blinks out of existence behind him.

You collapse to your knees in your empty, silent room. 

“I love you too,” you gasp, through sobs you don’t think you’ll be without, ever again.

_fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dearest readers: Although this was planned to be the last chapter of my Cop Rick/reader series, that certainly doesn't mean other stories aren't meant to be told. There is lots of unaccounted for time between the beginning and this end, so who knows what else may be written?
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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